Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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Tag: recession

Concern about the pay, benefits, and performance of government employees seems to be growing. Chris Edwards’s articles on how government pay is outpacing private-sector pay have generated media attention, cartoons, and angry rebuttals from the head of the federal Office of Personnel Management. Steven Greenhut has a new book, Plunder! How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation, and is writing lots of newspaper articles on the high costs of government unions, also the topic of a recent Cato Policy Analysis. New Jersey unions are not finding much sympathy as they try to hold on to their raises, benefits, pensions, and work rules in the face of Gov. Chris Christie’s attempt to cut the budget. Liberal journalist Mickey Kaus is running for the U.S. Senate, trying to warn California’s voters and the Democratic Party about the excessive power and destructive influence of public employee unions.

And now Saturday Night Live. The zeitgeist-riding comedy show had a truly harsh sketch this weekend about the “Public Employee of the Year Awards.” It touched every element of popular resentment toward government workers: “people with government jobs are just like workers everywhere – except for the lifetime job security, guaranteed annual raises, early retirement on generous pensions, and full medical coverage with no deductibles, office visit fees, or copayments” – “retirement on full disability” by an obviously young and healthy worker – “Surliest and Least Cooperative State Employee” – “3200 hours [a year] on the job, all of it overtime” – New York school janitors living in Florida – employees with two current jobs and full disability – an entire workday at the DMV without serving a single customer – no-work contracts – surprisingly early closings – and “he’s on break.”

One of the topics Chris Edwards will be discussing with Glenn Beck this evening (5:00 EST, Fox) is the “Not-So-Great Depression” of 1920-21.

Cato Senior Fellow Jim Powell notes that President Warren G. Harding inherited from his predecessor Woodrow Wilson “a post–World War I depression that was almost as severe, from peak to trough, as the Great Contraction from 1929 to 1933 that FDR would later inherit.”

However, instead of calling for bigger government to right the economy, as President Obama did upon inheriting George Bush’s mess, Harding pushed for spending and tax cuts.

The result?

With Harding’s tax and spending cuts and relatively non-interventionist economic policy, GNP rebounded to $74.1 billion in 1922. The number of unemployed fell to 2.8 million— a reported 6.7 percent of the labor force— in 1922. So, just a year and a half after Harding became president, the Roaring Twenties were underway. The unemployment rate continued to decline, reaching an extraordinary low of 1.8 percent in 1926. Since then, the unemployment rate has been lower only once in wartime (1944), and never in peacetime.

Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that while the Congressional projection would probably be borne out, the change would have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees would keep receiving their checks as usual.

The problem, he said, is that payments have risen more than expected during the downturn, because jobs disappeared and people applied for benefits sooner than they had planned. At the same time, the program’s revenue has fallen sharply, because there are fewer paychecks to tax.

Analysts have long tried to predict the year when Social Security would pay out more than it took in because they view it as a tipping point — the first step of a long, slow march to insolvency, unless Congress strengthens the program’s finances.

The crisis is now, since the vaunted “trust fund” is filled with non-recourse government bonds–essentially worthless pieces of paper. There’s no there there when it comes to financing future benefits. Either payments have to come down or taxes have to go up, unless we adopt real reform centered around personal accounts. And the latter course seems ever more distant after Congress voted to expand federal control over every Americans’ health care.

“Wealthy Face Higher Taxes.” That’s the headline that greeted two million American businesspeople Tuesday when they opened their Wall Street Journals. Inside, another banner head: “Big Firms Would Face Deeper Tax Bite.” Turn to the New York Times: “A Red-Ink Decade/Obama Budget Sees Years of Deficits.” The Financial Times: “Obama to target overseas tax breaks.” Investor’s Business Daily: “Higher Taxes for All in Obama Budget, $1.6 Tril 2010 Deficit.” And the Washington Post (not that many productive people get that on their doorstep): “Obama budget would spend billions more.”

And President Obama wonders why banks aren’t lending, employers aren’t hiring, and investors are holding back? As the Economic Policy Institute illustrates, this is the slowest recovery of any postwar recession.

Let’s hope the Obama administration soon learns that higher taxes, more regulation, a larger share of GDP shifted to government, fears of Fed monetization of soaring debt – not to mention newspaper reports of Obama budgeteers “flipp[ing] through the tax code, looking for ideas” – can only discourage employers, investors, and entrepreneurs. Robert Higgs has cited the role of “regime uncertainty” in prolonging the Great Depression, as investors worried about what FDR might do next. Will Wilkinson points to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s saying “businesses want certainty. They need certainty so they can make long-term plans today.” Unfortunately, Will says, “Creating completely irresponsible, economically chilling regime uncertainty would appear to be the basic modus operandi of the Obama administration.”

Defense: In the post-9/11 years, defense spending bumped up to a higher plateau of around 4 percent of GDP. But now we have jumped to an even higher level of around 4.9 percent of GDP.

Interest: The Federal Reserve’s easy money policies reduced federal interest payments in recent years. That is coming to an end. Obama’s budget shows that interest payments will start rising rapidly next year and hit 3 percent of GDP by 2015. And that’s an optimistic projection.

Nondefense: This category includes all other federal spending. After a steady decline during the Clinton years to 12.9 percent of GDP, President Bush pushed up nondefense spending to a higher plateau of around 14.5 percent. Then came the recession and financial crisis, and the Bush-Obama tag team hiked spending to an even higher level of around 19 percent of GDP. That level of nondefense spending is almost double the level in 1970 measured as a share of the economy.

Exactly two years ago, George W. Bush released his final budget. Here’s what the Washington Posthad to say:

[T]he president’s budget envisions a big jump in the budget deficit, from $163 billion in 2007 to about $400 billion in 2008 and 2009. Much of that increase will be the result of a slowing economy and a stimulus package expected to cost about $150 billion.

Today’s release of President Obama’s FY 2011 budget shows that those deficit prognostications were way off:

Instead of a “big jump” to $400 billion in 2009, the actual deficit turned about to be a trillion dollars higher. Bush deserves most of the blame for that deficit, but the 2010 and 2011 deficits will be on Obama.

The frightening prospect is that, like Bush, Obama’s future budget projections will also turn out to be low-balled. Whether it has been war, natural disasters, or a recession, Bush and Obama have both responded to any “crisis” by spending gobs of money. Given that even Obama is projecting annual deficits still in the trillion dollar range by 2020, taxpayers had better hope the Taliban, Mother Nature, and the economy start cooperating.

Politifact.com looked into a remark from Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., that “Democrats have been considerably more effective at creating private-sector jobs.”

The statement was rated true, as a purely statistical matter. Yet the poltifact researcher did a good job questioning the significance of his own figures. He noted, correctly, that the president usually “deserves less credit for the good times – and less blame for the bad times.” And he added that job figures can be driven by outside factors such as oil price shocks, demographic changes or soldiers coming home after World War Two. He wryly noted “how surprised we are that Eisenhower, who presided over the ‘happy’ 1950s, managed an anemic half-percent job growth per year, while Jimmy “Malaise” Carter finished second with 3.45 percent annual job growth.” Anyone who remembers the runaway inflation of the Carter era will realize that annual rates of job growth are not enough to describe the overall economic situation.

The author also quoted me making the point that “timing can be hugely important.” It is so important, in fact, that we may need to add another dimension to politifact’s true-false meter to deal with political comments that are simply meaningless.

For the record, what follows is the full text of my email on this topic:

The error involved with assigning rates of job growth to Presidential terms is that six recent Presidents took office within a few months of the start of a recession: Obama (recession began December 2007), H.W. Bush (July 1990), G.W. Bush (Mar 2001), Reagan (July 1981), Nixon (Dec. 1969) and Ike (July 1953). As it happens, four of the five were Republicans.

One might argue that recessions launched near the end of the previous administration helped get these men elected. But these recessions were clearly left over from events that began previous years. It didn’t help that the first Pres. Bush passed a tax increase three months after the 1990 recession began, but the start of that recession is more plausibly blamed on the earlier spike in oil prices when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Since employment is a lagging indicator (one of the last things to improve), that means average job growth among Presidents who took office near the start of recessions is bound to look bad in comparison with Presidents who took office after an expansion was well underway. Bill Clinton took office in 1993, long after recession ended in March 1991. The same was true of Truman, LBJ and Carter. JFK took office a month before the 1960 recession ended.

Two-term Presidents also have more time to show good numbers, but only if they’re lucky enough to get out of office just before the next recession starts. Clinton squeaked by (despite falling stock prices and industrial production 2000), but Nixon, Eisenhower, Carter and G.W. Bush did not.

Since Bush 2nd began and ended office in recession, averages over 8 years outweigh 4 reasonably good years. This unprecedented bad timing is exaggerated by Paul Krugman’s comparison of “decades” [and President Obama’s recent reference to “the lost decade” of 1999-2009] which relies on starting and ending each decade in boomy 1959 rather than slumping 1960, ditto 1969 rather than 1970, 1979 rather than 1980, 1989 rather than 1990, and 1999 rather than 2000.

In short, statistics about employment growth over Presidential terms are dominated by the timing of the “business cycle” (including Federal Reserve policy), and have no apparent connection to economic policies attributed to the White House (as opposed to Congress).